Title: The Cirqus Voltaire (2/??)
Author: Allaine
Email: eac2nd@yahoo.com
Rating: PG
Distribution: www.fanfiction.net, and Gotham PM at ezboard. Anyone interested should just ask and can expect a positive answer.
Spoilers: Relies on Clayface's story from "Batman: The Animated Series", rather than the comic books. Familiarity with the Disney animated series Gargoyles is helpful, but not required.
Feedback: Always encouraged, often answered if meaningful, whether positive or negative.
Disclaimers: Clayface belongs to DC Comics, Kids WB and the Cartoon Network, the producers of the two Batman serials, the talented artists and voice actor, etc. Sapphire is inspired by one of the characters appearing in Gargoyles and Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles, which is copyright Buena Vista Television/The Walt Disney Company.
The Cirqus Voltaire, the ringmaster, and certain other characters are very loosely inspired by the pinball game of the same name. No infringement of these copyrights is intended, and is not authorized by the copyright holder. All other characters are original, as is the story.
Summary: Against his will, Clayface has been drafted into a twisted circus that seems to defy natural law, surrounded by people stranger than he. But perhaps he can become the first to escape the Cirqus with an unlikely friend's aid.
_______________________________________
Chapter 2
"Welcome again to the Cirqus Voltaire!"
Clayface lurked behind Sapphire and watched as Delphine, a hot little number dressed in deep pink spandex, blue eyes framed by brown curls, set the stage for Sapphire's "magic act". "She's easy on the eyes," he murmured.
"Lucky for you," Sapphire murmured back, "since she'll be the one member of our troupe you spend the most time with, other than me."
"I could live with that," he said appreciatively. "You're pretty good-looking yourself."
"Thanks," she replied drolly.
"Do you think I can trust her with my secret?" he whispered.
Sapphire thought about it for a moment. "Probably not," she decided. "She's a good person, but she's flighty and no genius. We're not especially close, either. I put up with her relentless good cheer," she sighed.
He looked into the crowd. Or tried to. "It's so goddamned dark," he muttered. "How do we even know if anyone's out there? Or if they can see us?"
"They can see us just fine," she told him. "The ringmaster doesn't want us to see them."
"Why the hell not?"
"He's afraid we might be able to tell something of the outside world from their features, their clothes, or their things," Sapphire explained. "As long as we're totally cut off from the real world, he thinks we're kept more firmly under his control."
Clayface shook his head. "Is he right?"
"I don't know," Sapphire admitted.
"And now," Delphine was saying, having completed a series of tumbles and flips, "having recuperated from the successful completion of her most difficult spell yet . . ."
Clayface had been discussing Cirqus personnel with Sapphire when the ringmaster had arrived and, after determining that yes, "Presto" knew how to change his appearance, informed Sapphire that the show was about to begin.
Instantly, before Clayface's startled eyes, Sapphire had turned to stone.
"What did you do?" he had asked, shocked.
"Nothing really," the ringmaster replied. "Did she explain to you about time here?"
Clayface had nodded dumbly.
"Well, Sapphire and the rest of her race, if any still exist," he explained, "turn to stone during the day, and awaken at night."
"So it's morning now?" Clayface had guessed.
The ringmaster had grinned. "I thought you understood, Presto. I determine when it is day and when it is night. I wish Sapphire to be stone now, so it is day. I will want her to be flesh at the start of the show, so it will be night. Very simple, Presto. You'll find life here to be very, very simple. Just do what I say."
When the ringmaster brought Sapphire into the ring later (how much later, Clayface already couldn't tell), she was unchanged, but before everyone's eyes, cracks appeared in the stone surface, and then it shattered like a second skin. Sapphire emerged as flakes sprayed in every direction, roaring to the heavens, claws (she had called them talons) out, her eyes shining red.
"Isn't that amazing?" the ringmaster said grandly. "The only person capable of magically transforming themselves into stone and living to tell of it!" Sapphire had only bowed to huge applause, smiling uncomfortably.
Clayface had done the math. Even if the Cirqus only showed once a week, then fifty-two weeks a year times the one hundred eighty years Sapphire claimed to have been there . . . was ten thousand showings. Ten thousand times she'd been displayed for the masses like a goddamned bearded lady.
At that moment, he felt sorry for her. But he also wondered if he'd be doing this ten thousand times - and his math was probably too conservative, Sapphire had done this maybe thirty thousand times - himself, and he felt a deeper connection to her as well.
Now Delphine was introducing her as the living statue, "Winged Victory stepping down from her pedestal, real as life!"
"Does she say that every time?" he asked.
"She must be as sick of it as I," Sapphire muttered.
"The astounding Sapphire, and her new second assistant, Presto!"
He found himself slowly walking out of the shadows and into the harsh lights, keeping pace behind Sapphire, who was stately in her black dress and red cape, hood down. Being called Presto for the rest of his life . . . he shuddered in his new clothes.
That was right, clothes. Not understanding that Clayface's outfit was actually part of his body, and of course Clayface had not enlightened him, the ringmaster had insisted he dress in a garish vest and leggings with pink and purple diamonds. It felt constrictive against a body used to absolute freedom of movement, but worse, it felt really, really lame.
Turning to face him, she removed her cloak and offered it to him. As rehearsed, he took the cloak from her arm while kissing the back of her hand. This time, however, he looked up at her while he did so and winked.
For the first time that night, he thought she had smiled genuinely.
Then he brought the cloak to a stage hand - that was another thing, he couldn't make out his features, it was like the lighting became dim whenever one of these guys appeared - and returned to his place behind Sapphire and across from Delphine, who smiled sweetly at him.
If only she knew, he thought. Not that he would tell her.
"Thank you for your introduction, Delphine," Sapphire said gravely as she made a fist, even though there was nothing in her hand, and then opened it, throwing nothing into the air - only now there were streams of colored light that swirled upwards and exploded in a miniature fireworks display.
"Nice," he murmured as the crowd ooh'ed.
"A cantrip," Sapphire said through clenched teeth, "one of the only real spells you'll see tonight."
As the time approached for his big scene, Clayface appreciated her reply. Most of this stuff was rote magic tricks - sawing Delphine in half, getting out of handcuffs, the usual. He remembered being bored by this the last time . . .
He blinked. That was something he'd forgotten until now, he realized. He had sat there, a paying customer like all the working stiffs and children around him, the night before and watched Sapphire do her magic act, and not once had her appearance surprised or alarmed him. Nor had it bothered anyone else. You would _think_ that the sight of a woman with blue skin and wings and a tail would frighten a crowd of people, but it hadn't. He hadn't even remembered seeing such a thing until now.
This was so striking that he almost didn't hear his name called. "Presto," Sapphire asked, gesturing to him.
Swallowing his pride and putting aside his puzzlement for now, Clayface came when called.
"Earlier tonight," Sapphire said, "you saw me transform from a stone statue into a living, breathing woman. Now watch as I turn my willing assistant here into things you will not believe!"
"Ready for this?" she asked softly, looking away from the crowds.
"I remember my cues," he said, which wasn't exactly an answer to her question, but Sapphire understood and, bowing her head for a second, backed away.
"Presto!" she called out, pointing a talon at him.
"Change-o!"
His whole body rippled as he turned from a man into a horse, complete with saddle.
Giving the audience just a few seconds to react in amazement and glee, she repeated the words, and this time he became a polar bear, sitting on its rear. Again, and he was a black panther, lounging on the sawdust with tightly coiled menace.
"Presto! Change-o!" Sapphire said one more time, and Clayface was a man again.
The crowds instantly burst into applause, and Clayface could just barely see their hands moving back and forth.
In a normal circus, he supposed this was the best part for the performers, hearing the audience cheer for a job well done. He just felt like a chump, and glancing at Sapphire, he wondered how she could stand almost two centuries of this.
Their eyes met for a moment, and he guessed that she wondered the exact same thing.
___________________________________
"He's got a nice group of performers," Clayface said afterwards in Sapphire's "room".
"They are very talented," she agreed. "The highwire act, the acrobats, the animal trainer and his menagerie . . ."
"And don't forget the Amazing Roonie," he added.
"Oh yes," she replied, smiling wryly. "Who could forget Sideshow Sam and his unicycle-riding kangaroo?" But then her smile slipped away.
He looked at her. "What?"
She sighed. "You must look at us and think we are the most pathetic collection you have ever seen."
Clayface shrugged uncomfortably. "I seem to be a part of that collection, you know."
"But you could get out," she said.
"You seemed to think earlier that I had no chance."
"I've seen them fail time and again, but . . . you never know. Your power is great, Clayface."
"Thanks for using my real name," he said. "That presto change-o thing is driving me nuts."
"You're welcome."
"So I could get out," he went on. "Hell, I plan on it. What's the problem with that? Jealous?"
She looked away. "Yes," she told him.
He wasn't entirely surprised. "Because you can't."
"If I couldn't do it in 1814, I certainly can't do it now," Sapphire said heavily, "not after learning to obey his every command for a hundred and eighty years. I used to be someone so different, you know. I used to be strong. I was a warrior. Now I'm one of those dolls that talks only when a man puts his hand up their backs."
"A dummy," he said.
"Is that what they call them now?" she sighed. "I wonder if I even want to leave here now. The world must be so different. My kind - so few when I was kidnapped. Are there any left? And always, she is waiting for me, that look on her face . . ."
"Who's she?"
"No one," Sapphire said too quickly, obviously regretting her slip of the tongue. "Yes, maybe this is my place now, a helpless slave to this farce of a world, while the real world leaves me further behind."
Clayface didn't have to say anything. He had a place of his own somewhere in this little world of the ringmaster's. He didn't have to be her pal outside the ring. But if she envied his chances for getting out, all she had to do was tell the ringmaster everything and he wouldn't remember anything before having water spilled onto his face by a blue-skinned woman. To be blunt, he probably owed her.
And to be honest, he thought he liked her.
"How about I cut you a deal?" he asked.
"A deal," she repeated, dubious.
"We swap stories," Clayface said. "I tell you about me, and more importantly, about this world you seem so intimidated by. And in return, you tell me everything you can about this dump. And when you don't have anything more," he added, "you can tell me about your race, and what it was like living in France back in the days of Napoleon."
She looked at him carefully. "You could be gone in a couple days," she said.
"I could be here for a couple centuries," he replied matter-of-factly.
"Well," she said consideringly, "all right then." Sapphire shook her head. "Someone like I, reduced to playing a title part in 'Two Scheherezades'. But," she admitted, "it won't be the first time I have spent my nights like this."
"Really?" he asked. "When was the first time?"
She grinned now, a little wickedly, as if she knew something he did not. "The Palace Versailles," she responded. "In 1585."
"_Fifteen_ eighty-five?" Clayface said. "Don't you mean _seventeen_ eighty-five?"
Sapphire's smile grew a little broader, and he saw her fangs gleaming at him. "You heard me correctly," she told him.
Doing the math in his head, he stared. "That it'd make you over two hundred years old when the Cirqus grabbed you," he said. "How long do you gargoyles live, anyway?"
"About twice as long as you humans," she replied.
"You look pretty good for your age," Clayface told her. "Do all your senior citizens look like that?"
"Senior citizens," she said blankly. "Oh, you mean our elders. No, we age normally."
"Then how . . ."
Her good humor vanished. "It is a long story," she told him somberly. "As long as I have lived, in fact, and I was over 800 years old when the Cirqus found me."
He whistled.
"And it is not a story with a happy beginning, or a happy ending," she added. "Just a few brief times of happiness, which seem all that much shorter compared to the hundreds of years of loneliness." Sapphire angrily rubbed a tear out of her eye.
"But this is your deal," she said, almost defiantly. Whether she was defying him or her tears, he couldn't say. "And you will not get that story out of me until I have heard one of yours. So begin, unless you want me to call you Presto."
"No, not that," he responded, holding up a hand. "Okay. Speaking of dummies . . . I used to know this guy, he was a ventriloquist, someone who uses one of those talking dolls."
"Right," she said, "they talk without opening their mouths. Another bit of magic, that is not magic at all."
"Yeah," he said. "Anyway, he had this dummy called Scarface."
To be continued . . .
Author: Allaine
Email: eac2nd@yahoo.com
Rating: PG
Distribution: www.fanfiction.net, and Gotham PM at ezboard. Anyone interested should just ask and can expect a positive answer.
Spoilers: Relies on Clayface's story from "Batman: The Animated Series", rather than the comic books. Familiarity with the Disney animated series Gargoyles is helpful, but not required.
Feedback: Always encouraged, often answered if meaningful, whether positive or negative.
Disclaimers: Clayface belongs to DC Comics, Kids WB and the Cartoon Network, the producers of the two Batman serials, the talented artists and voice actor, etc. Sapphire is inspired by one of the characters appearing in Gargoyles and Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles, which is copyright Buena Vista Television/The Walt Disney Company.
The Cirqus Voltaire, the ringmaster, and certain other characters are very loosely inspired by the pinball game of the same name. No infringement of these copyrights is intended, and is not authorized by the copyright holder. All other characters are original, as is the story.
Summary: Against his will, Clayface has been drafted into a twisted circus that seems to defy natural law, surrounded by people stranger than he. But perhaps he can become the first to escape the Cirqus with an unlikely friend's aid.
_______________________________________
Chapter 2
"Welcome again to the Cirqus Voltaire!"
Clayface lurked behind Sapphire and watched as Delphine, a hot little number dressed in deep pink spandex, blue eyes framed by brown curls, set the stage for Sapphire's "magic act". "She's easy on the eyes," he murmured.
"Lucky for you," Sapphire murmured back, "since she'll be the one member of our troupe you spend the most time with, other than me."
"I could live with that," he said appreciatively. "You're pretty good-looking yourself."
"Thanks," she replied drolly.
"Do you think I can trust her with my secret?" he whispered.
Sapphire thought about it for a moment. "Probably not," she decided. "She's a good person, but she's flighty and no genius. We're not especially close, either. I put up with her relentless good cheer," she sighed.
He looked into the crowd. Or tried to. "It's so goddamned dark," he muttered. "How do we even know if anyone's out there? Or if they can see us?"
"They can see us just fine," she told him. "The ringmaster doesn't want us to see them."
"Why the hell not?"
"He's afraid we might be able to tell something of the outside world from their features, their clothes, or their things," Sapphire explained. "As long as we're totally cut off from the real world, he thinks we're kept more firmly under his control."
Clayface shook his head. "Is he right?"
"I don't know," Sapphire admitted.
"And now," Delphine was saying, having completed a series of tumbles and flips, "having recuperated from the successful completion of her most difficult spell yet . . ."
Clayface had been discussing Cirqus personnel with Sapphire when the ringmaster had arrived and, after determining that yes, "Presto" knew how to change his appearance, informed Sapphire that the show was about to begin.
Instantly, before Clayface's startled eyes, Sapphire had turned to stone.
"What did you do?" he had asked, shocked.
"Nothing really," the ringmaster replied. "Did she explain to you about time here?"
Clayface had nodded dumbly.
"Well, Sapphire and the rest of her race, if any still exist," he explained, "turn to stone during the day, and awaken at night."
"So it's morning now?" Clayface had guessed.
The ringmaster had grinned. "I thought you understood, Presto. I determine when it is day and when it is night. I wish Sapphire to be stone now, so it is day. I will want her to be flesh at the start of the show, so it will be night. Very simple, Presto. You'll find life here to be very, very simple. Just do what I say."
When the ringmaster brought Sapphire into the ring later (how much later, Clayface already couldn't tell), she was unchanged, but before everyone's eyes, cracks appeared in the stone surface, and then it shattered like a second skin. Sapphire emerged as flakes sprayed in every direction, roaring to the heavens, claws (she had called them talons) out, her eyes shining red.
"Isn't that amazing?" the ringmaster said grandly. "The only person capable of magically transforming themselves into stone and living to tell of it!" Sapphire had only bowed to huge applause, smiling uncomfortably.
Clayface had done the math. Even if the Cirqus only showed once a week, then fifty-two weeks a year times the one hundred eighty years Sapphire claimed to have been there . . . was ten thousand showings. Ten thousand times she'd been displayed for the masses like a goddamned bearded lady.
At that moment, he felt sorry for her. But he also wondered if he'd be doing this ten thousand times - and his math was probably too conservative, Sapphire had done this maybe thirty thousand times - himself, and he felt a deeper connection to her as well.
Now Delphine was introducing her as the living statue, "Winged Victory stepping down from her pedestal, real as life!"
"Does she say that every time?" he asked.
"She must be as sick of it as I," Sapphire muttered.
"The astounding Sapphire, and her new second assistant, Presto!"
He found himself slowly walking out of the shadows and into the harsh lights, keeping pace behind Sapphire, who was stately in her black dress and red cape, hood down. Being called Presto for the rest of his life . . . he shuddered in his new clothes.
That was right, clothes. Not understanding that Clayface's outfit was actually part of his body, and of course Clayface had not enlightened him, the ringmaster had insisted he dress in a garish vest and leggings with pink and purple diamonds. It felt constrictive against a body used to absolute freedom of movement, but worse, it felt really, really lame.
Turning to face him, she removed her cloak and offered it to him. As rehearsed, he took the cloak from her arm while kissing the back of her hand. This time, however, he looked up at her while he did so and winked.
For the first time that night, he thought she had smiled genuinely.
Then he brought the cloak to a stage hand - that was another thing, he couldn't make out his features, it was like the lighting became dim whenever one of these guys appeared - and returned to his place behind Sapphire and across from Delphine, who smiled sweetly at him.
If only she knew, he thought. Not that he would tell her.
"Thank you for your introduction, Delphine," Sapphire said gravely as she made a fist, even though there was nothing in her hand, and then opened it, throwing nothing into the air - only now there were streams of colored light that swirled upwards and exploded in a miniature fireworks display.
"Nice," he murmured as the crowd ooh'ed.
"A cantrip," Sapphire said through clenched teeth, "one of the only real spells you'll see tonight."
As the time approached for his big scene, Clayface appreciated her reply. Most of this stuff was rote magic tricks - sawing Delphine in half, getting out of handcuffs, the usual. He remembered being bored by this the last time . . .
He blinked. That was something he'd forgotten until now, he realized. He had sat there, a paying customer like all the working stiffs and children around him, the night before and watched Sapphire do her magic act, and not once had her appearance surprised or alarmed him. Nor had it bothered anyone else. You would _think_ that the sight of a woman with blue skin and wings and a tail would frighten a crowd of people, but it hadn't. He hadn't even remembered seeing such a thing until now.
This was so striking that he almost didn't hear his name called. "Presto," Sapphire asked, gesturing to him.
Swallowing his pride and putting aside his puzzlement for now, Clayface came when called.
"Earlier tonight," Sapphire said, "you saw me transform from a stone statue into a living, breathing woman. Now watch as I turn my willing assistant here into things you will not believe!"
"Ready for this?" she asked softly, looking away from the crowds.
"I remember my cues," he said, which wasn't exactly an answer to her question, but Sapphire understood and, bowing her head for a second, backed away.
"Presto!" she called out, pointing a talon at him.
"Change-o!"
His whole body rippled as he turned from a man into a horse, complete with saddle.
Giving the audience just a few seconds to react in amazement and glee, she repeated the words, and this time he became a polar bear, sitting on its rear. Again, and he was a black panther, lounging on the sawdust with tightly coiled menace.
"Presto! Change-o!" Sapphire said one more time, and Clayface was a man again.
The crowds instantly burst into applause, and Clayface could just barely see their hands moving back and forth.
In a normal circus, he supposed this was the best part for the performers, hearing the audience cheer for a job well done. He just felt like a chump, and glancing at Sapphire, he wondered how she could stand almost two centuries of this.
Their eyes met for a moment, and he guessed that she wondered the exact same thing.
___________________________________
"He's got a nice group of performers," Clayface said afterwards in Sapphire's "room".
"They are very talented," she agreed. "The highwire act, the acrobats, the animal trainer and his menagerie . . ."
"And don't forget the Amazing Roonie," he added.
"Oh yes," she replied, smiling wryly. "Who could forget Sideshow Sam and his unicycle-riding kangaroo?" But then her smile slipped away.
He looked at her. "What?"
She sighed. "You must look at us and think we are the most pathetic collection you have ever seen."
Clayface shrugged uncomfortably. "I seem to be a part of that collection, you know."
"But you could get out," she said.
"You seemed to think earlier that I had no chance."
"I've seen them fail time and again, but . . . you never know. Your power is great, Clayface."
"Thanks for using my real name," he said. "That presto change-o thing is driving me nuts."
"You're welcome."
"So I could get out," he went on. "Hell, I plan on it. What's the problem with that? Jealous?"
She looked away. "Yes," she told him.
He wasn't entirely surprised. "Because you can't."
"If I couldn't do it in 1814, I certainly can't do it now," Sapphire said heavily, "not after learning to obey his every command for a hundred and eighty years. I used to be someone so different, you know. I used to be strong. I was a warrior. Now I'm one of those dolls that talks only when a man puts his hand up their backs."
"A dummy," he said.
"Is that what they call them now?" she sighed. "I wonder if I even want to leave here now. The world must be so different. My kind - so few when I was kidnapped. Are there any left? And always, she is waiting for me, that look on her face . . ."
"Who's she?"
"No one," Sapphire said too quickly, obviously regretting her slip of the tongue. "Yes, maybe this is my place now, a helpless slave to this farce of a world, while the real world leaves me further behind."
Clayface didn't have to say anything. He had a place of his own somewhere in this little world of the ringmaster's. He didn't have to be her pal outside the ring. But if she envied his chances for getting out, all she had to do was tell the ringmaster everything and he wouldn't remember anything before having water spilled onto his face by a blue-skinned woman. To be blunt, he probably owed her.
And to be honest, he thought he liked her.
"How about I cut you a deal?" he asked.
"A deal," she repeated, dubious.
"We swap stories," Clayface said. "I tell you about me, and more importantly, about this world you seem so intimidated by. And in return, you tell me everything you can about this dump. And when you don't have anything more," he added, "you can tell me about your race, and what it was like living in France back in the days of Napoleon."
She looked at him carefully. "You could be gone in a couple days," she said.
"I could be here for a couple centuries," he replied matter-of-factly.
"Well," she said consideringly, "all right then." Sapphire shook her head. "Someone like I, reduced to playing a title part in 'Two Scheherezades'. But," she admitted, "it won't be the first time I have spent my nights like this."
"Really?" he asked. "When was the first time?"
She grinned now, a little wickedly, as if she knew something he did not. "The Palace Versailles," she responded. "In 1585."
"_Fifteen_ eighty-five?" Clayface said. "Don't you mean _seventeen_ eighty-five?"
Sapphire's smile grew a little broader, and he saw her fangs gleaming at him. "You heard me correctly," she told him.
Doing the math in his head, he stared. "That it'd make you over two hundred years old when the Cirqus grabbed you," he said. "How long do you gargoyles live, anyway?"
"About twice as long as you humans," she replied.
"You look pretty good for your age," Clayface told her. "Do all your senior citizens look like that?"
"Senior citizens," she said blankly. "Oh, you mean our elders. No, we age normally."
"Then how . . ."
Her good humor vanished. "It is a long story," she told him somberly. "As long as I have lived, in fact, and I was over 800 years old when the Cirqus found me."
He whistled.
"And it is not a story with a happy beginning, or a happy ending," she added. "Just a few brief times of happiness, which seem all that much shorter compared to the hundreds of years of loneliness." Sapphire angrily rubbed a tear out of her eye.
"But this is your deal," she said, almost defiantly. Whether she was defying him or her tears, he couldn't say. "And you will not get that story out of me until I have heard one of yours. So begin, unless you want me to call you Presto."
"No, not that," he responded, holding up a hand. "Okay. Speaking of dummies . . . I used to know this guy, he was a ventriloquist, someone who uses one of those talking dolls."
"Right," she said, "they talk without opening their mouths. Another bit of magic, that is not magic at all."
"Yeah," he said. "Anyway, he had this dummy called Scarface."
To be continued . . .
